248 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
GROUSE SHOOTING. 
HIS noble sport I have never myself 
had an opportunity of enjoying, though 
I still live in the hope of finding myself 
on some fine autumnal morning, in the 
Western Prairies, with two or three 
brace of good dogs, a staunch compan¬ 
ion, and all appurtenances suitable for 
a month’s sport. 
They are in all respects the noblest 
bird, which is to be shot over Pointers in the United States ; and 
the vast numbers in which they are still found in their own Prai¬ 
rie-land, the magnificent range of country which is spread out be¬ 
fore the eye of the sportsman, the openness of the shooting, and 
the opportunity of observing all the motions of the dogs, must 
render this sport, like the Red Grouse shooting in Great Britain, 
the Queen of American field sports. 
In the state of New Jersey a few packs of these fine birds still 
breed annually among the sandy pine barrens along the southern 
shore ; the best of these shooting grounds are now exclusively oc¬ 
cupied by three or four gentlemen resident in the vicinity of Bur¬ 
lington, Bordentown, and Trenton, who either rent or have pur¬ 
chased them for the purpose of sporting thereon, and on the pre¬ 
tence of wishing to preserve them. I say the pretence, for I 
grieve to say that no feeling of chivalrous sportsmanship deter 
these gentlemen, some of whom are excellent shots, from butch¬ 
ering these noble birds even in the month of July, when they 
are utterly unfit for killing; and for this outrage on sportsman¬ 
ship and humanity, there is the less palliation—excuse or justifi¬ 
cation, there never can be any—in that occupying the grounds ex¬ 
clusively, they are safe from the apprehension of being anticipa¬ 
ted by poachers or pot-hunters. Why, then, they should them- 
